China's global role: challenging the US

outline:

Introduction

Current developments: China's Xi Jinping

Fudamental issues: Chinese regime transformations from Mao to Deng and Deng to Xi

Geopolitical issues: East Asia, the international China / USA confrontation, where does world history take place?

For the general framework: see Peter's report "Imperialism, from the highest stage of capitalism to globalization"

I. China's Xi Jinping

A significant change in the mode of governance (ie the political regime)

Taking the initiative in East Asia:

Military: the reclamation of the South China Sea, the rivalry with Japan, the VII US Fleet and the political factor

Economic: role of the Chinese market and investments

Politics: a model of authoritarian capitalist development

The implementation of a global ambition. Imperialist in its projects and practices. Control the ways and means of communication, the food and mineral resources ...

The new silk roads

The military deployment

Financial strength

A turning point in post-Mao history and its contradictions.

When the crisis comes

II. How did China become imperialist?

Apparent continuity of the CCP, reality of qualitative change in all domains.

The army or the navy?

The radicality of social change: Two upheavals of the class structure in China: after 1949, then from the 80s: Bourgeoisie, working class, peasantry, women, ideology, etc.

The internal conditions of the birth of a new bourgeoisie:

The CCP and the Maoist regime after 49: an internal, evolutionary contradiction.

The narrowing, then the loss of the mass base of the original Maoism.

The Cultural Revolution and the completion of the bureaucratic counter-revolution.

The political conditions of the turn towards the capitalist transition.

From a dominant layer (state bureaucracy in a transitional society) to a wealthy (bourgeois) class. Transmission to the heirs.

A specific form of bureaucratic capitalism: families, state enterprises and individual capital. An original social formation.

Birth of a new independent bourgeoisie.

The international conditions of its expansion:

Capitalist globalization and the freedom of capital movement.

The end of the exclusive control of a territory (in subordinate alliance with the elites) by an imperialism.

The optimism of capital "in globalization" after the implosion of the USSR.

Subordination? The question asked in China in the early 2000s.

III. Asian and world geopolitics

The Korean crisis and its regional implications

A specific issue: access to the Pacific Ocean for China, international navigation in the China Sea.

The initiative has changed sides.

A general issue: the geopolitical place of East Asia for all the major powers.

Obama and the bankruptcy of the retrenchment (the "Asian pivot"). Trump and the credibility of the US commitment to its allies.

Expansionism as a response to the risk of internal crisis - until when?

The new Great Leap Forward - how far? Technological innovations, modernization of the armed forces and test of fire ...

Xi Jinping's regime as a crisis factor. When will the crisis come?

Structuring global geopolitics: from conflict within a relationship of interdependence to interdependence within a geopolitical conflict.

Rising power (China) and established power (USA).

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Au Loong-yu, Pierre Rousset - The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party – Modernisation by a pre-modern bureaucracy? 2017 [1]

Au Loong-yu - China: End of a Model…Or the Birth of a New One? 2009 [2]

Pierre Rousset: From whence did the new Chinese capitalism emerge? “Bourgeoisification” of the bureaucracy and globalization 2014 [3]